


another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door

by ships_to_sail



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Drunk Dialing, Light Angst, M/M, Mutual Pining, Voicemail
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-16 23:55:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28715364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ships_to_sail/pseuds/ships_to_sail
Summary: Some part of him has a vague sense of how ridiculous he is, crouched over a motel sink, wondering if he can make his cellphone ring more quietly in his ear because the last thing he needs is Alexis to wake up and see...all of this. But he can’t bring himself to care, can’t bring himself to focus on anything else as his eyes read the same words over and over again on his phone screen: One missed call, one voicemail.Both from Brewer, Patrick.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Comments: 16
Kudos: 206





	another shot of whiskey, can't stop looking at the door

**Author's Note:**

> *taps mic* Is this thing still on?
> 
> Hello, friends. I've missed you all. 2020 was. I mean. Right?! And then 2021 started and we were all hopeful, and a fucking coup happened. But! I promised myself I'd wrestle the words again and here we are. Why did I think it was a good idea to hit the ground running with a hearty dose of post-Barbecue angst? 
> 
> Friend, if I knew the answer to that, I wouldn't be the person that I am now, would I? 
> 
> And because I'm me, I also figured that I'd come out of the gate with something completely unbeta'd, so you know. Blame me for all the parts that don't make sense.

Later, it will be a funny story. A story they tell a little differently each time, a story that becomes A Story, one of those tales that fills in the gaps of a relationship like mortar into the divots of quarry stone. 

Right now, it’s not a funny story.

Right now, David can’t quite piece together what is happening because  _ of course  _ he’d forgotten to push the charger into the fucking phone, so while he’d been dreaming away, his phone had only been  _ pretending  _ to be plugged in. And of  _ course  _ the minute it turned on, the first thing he saw slammed him in the chest so hard he’d practically ran to the bathroom, barely managing to shut the door gently enough that Alexis didn’t wake up. 

And now he’s hunched over the bathroom sink, phone pressed to his ear by the sharp of his shoulder as he searches for any way to magically make his knock-off iPhone cord, like, six inches longer. 

Some part of him has a vague sense of how ridiculous he is, crouched over a motel sink, wondering if he can make his cellphone ring more quietly in his ear because the  _ last  _ thing he needs is Alexis to wake up and see...all of this. But he can’t bring himself to care, can’t bring himself to focus on anything else as his eyes read the same words over and over again on his phone screen: One missed call, one voicemail.

Both from  **_Brewer, Patrick_ ** . 

The last name David thought he’d see on his phone, given….everything that had happened yesterday. The last name he  _ wanted  _ to see bannered across the top of his phone screen. He doesn’t want to hear from Patrick. Doesn’t need to hear any of his excuses. Doesn’t  _ want _ to hear any of his excuses. David’s over it, and over making bad choices for people that can’t give him the basic dignity of the truth. 

His thumb slams into the  **voicemail** button.

“D-daavidd?” The voice on the other end is talking in a slur, adding multiple vowels and, somehow, multiple consonants to all various parts of his words, but. Even with the alcohol making his voice go all slippery and raspy, the edges all soft and cuddly, David remembers the look on Patrick’s face when Rachel had trailed into  _ his family dinner  _ behind Alexis, and his stomach drops. “Davvidddd. You din’ ansswer. Went right t’ voicemail. You don’ wanna talk. ‘sokay, we won’ taalk. Bye, David Ro…” His voice trails off and David presses the pads of his fingers so firmly into the corners of his eyes that he sees stars on the backs of his eyelids, ignoring the damp feeling caught between his fingers and cheek. He’s waiting for Patrick to hang up, but as the seconds continue to click upward, he hears a tapping sound, and then a series of muffled noises that sound a awful lot like fabric scratching on fabric. David closes his eyes and can almost see it:

Patrick, pulling the phone away from his face and trying his hardest to hit the big red ‘end call’ button, squinting one eye and tilting his head to the right to more clearly see the target. He misses, of course, but not for lack of trying. And besides, he doesn’t notice either way, because David would bet his entire Rick Owens collection that the next sound was the sound of mid-range denim shifting on the slightly pilled, slightly corded fabric of Patrick’s favorite chair in Ray’s living room.

It was a Saturday, and Ray was out of town at a conference. David knew that because it had meant that he and Patrick were going to have the whole morning to be lazy, to make breakfast and shower and...the longing for all the  _ ‘and’ _ s that were now off the table is like a punch to the stomach, and David is just pulling the phone away to hang up with he hears them.

The first few notes are plucked softly. Hesitantly. David misses this part of Patrick, as much as he misses any and every other part of him with an intensity so strong it takes him aback, makes him want to pause and look at himself, ask the kinds of questions he’s not sure he wants answers to. Familiar questions about wants, and desires, and completely foreign questions that had followed along in the wake of Patrick — about family, and commitment, and forever. 

So he’s got to hang up the phone. Besides, this clearly wasn’t meant for him to hear. He should just end the call and go back to bed, he’s got to be up disgustingly early tomorrow anyway. With an internal groan, he thinks of his alarm for 7:30am and his finger hovers over the end call button. 

But then Patrick starts singing. 

And where all his spoken words had been slurred, the ones he’s singing stand out from one another, arranged neatly and properly spaced, if a little softer at the edges. His voice is rough, and he’s singing like he’s a little out of breath, but even with all of that, it’s the most beautiful thing David’s ever heard. Well. Second most beautiful, because Hillary Scott is no Mariah Carey, but he’s always been a secret sucker for a sappy-sad romantic country song. 

“ _ Said I wouldn’t call, but I lost all control and I need you now,”  _ Patrick’s voice cracks, and David feels his own heart follow suit. It’s been doing that more and more lately, splintering along fault lines old and new, and David has begun to seriously wonder how many hits a human heart can take, besides the fact that he was supposed to have taken care of this whole  _ feelings  _ things after he’d reenacted the Sochi Olympic diving trials with Sebastien’s memory card. 

Patrick is strumming the same chords over and over again, singing through the final, “ _ I need you now” _ s on what seems to be an endless repeat, each one slightly different than the last, and David wonders just how long the voicemail can keep going when suddenly Patrick stops singing and there’s only silence on the line.

David wants to clap. Wants to pull up the person whose voice had made that sound and wrap them close enough that there wasn’t any room for pasts, or futures, or people named Rachel. But he can’t, and even if he could, he shouldn’t, and his arms ache with the weight of unfulfilled action. David squeezes them tightly across his chest but it’s not enough, not even a cruel imitation of enough. He hears the scraping again, the dragging of fabric on fabric, and Patrick is muttering.

“Gotta set’n alarm,” he slurs, and David fights a rising tide of tenderness. 

David hears the gentle thunk of the guitar on the floor, and then a too-loud, perfectly enunciated “Shit.” There’s movement, and a lot of it, and something heavy hits the floor, all the while Patrick just keeps muttering, “Holy shit.”

And then the line goes dead.

David doesn’t delete the voicemail. He should. He knows he should. Instead, he listens to it again. And again. And again, until his fingers start to gain the muscle memory of knowing just how to do it, until he starts to nod off against the bathroom wall, phone jammed between his ear and his shoulder. The third time his head jerks heavily on his neck, he forces himself to hang up and slide into bed, his phone still perched on the edge of the sink, charger fully plugged in and triple checked.

*

The next afternoon, there’s a while cardboard box sitting in the middle of the table in the staff room, a small card tucked beneath the ribbon. The card, almost obnoxiously nice, is made of heavy cream paper and embossed with a logo that pings somewhere faintly in the back of David’s mind. There isn’t much written on it, three words that aren’t in Patrick’s handwriting: 

_ I’m sorry. — Patrick  _

David doesn’t know if he’s apologizing for the voicemail, or the barbecue, or the entirety of knowing him, but then he opens the box and it doesn’t much matter anymore. Or, it will matter more later, when David isn’t busy pulling the stunning bracelet out of the box. The hammered silver shines in the afternoon sunlight of the shop, the corners glinting like faceted gems. It fits perfectly around his wrist and matches the chain that’s resting comfortably in his top drawer back at the motel. He slips it on and spends the next fifteen minutes staring at it, turning his wrist around slowly and hearing Patrick’s voice from the night before in the back of his mind, slow and sad and full of a Truth that was hard for David to face full-on.

By the time Patrick comes into the shop later, David has put the box away and slid the cuffs of his sweater down onto the palms of his hands, although he doesn’t take the bracelet off, and he notices Patrick’s eyes lock on to it the one time his sleeves slip down his arms as he reaches to the back of a tall shelf for the last bottle of lavender bath salts. But, he doesn’t say anything, so neither does David. And when Patrick’s shoulder bumps into his later, however briefly, he doesn’t do anything to snuff out the little spark of hope that lights up along the palms of his hands and the pads of his fingers. 

He heads out early, leaving Patrick to pull the longer split shift at the store, and it’s not until he’s home that he realizes that he hadn’t mentioned the voicemail. He’d be lying to say he didn’t feel a little relieved — and a little smug — that at least they were finally even for embarrassing inebriated phone calls.

Not that David would ever share his with Ray.

Not for every last silver bracelet in the world. 


End file.
